ENHANCING GAME PLAY

"Gameplay is a very important factor in any game. For adventure games, it's very frustrating to realise (hours later) that you've misinterpreted a clue or have gone down the wrong "path" in the game and now have to go back and retrace your steps. In Timelapse we've addressed this in an innovative way by providing the player with an 'instant camera'. This feature allows the user to take snapshots of any scene they think might be important for solving puzzles. They'll then be able to bring up this stack of photos at any time in the future for reference," Mike said.

"Timelapse also contains a professor's journal which is an on-screen book documenting the missing archaeologist's travels through the five worlds. By incorporating clues and hints into the actual journal via text and pictures/sketches and drawings, readers will be able to glean subtle hints designed to help them progress through the worlds. We did not want to give away the puzzle solutions too easily, and yet, we also did not want to make things too hard," said Mike.

"We also designed in 360-degree panoramic turns at strategic locations in the worlds. These panning turns allow the player to view more of the game world in a more natural and realistic manner, thus enhancing the overall feeling of immersion. " said Mike

CONSUMER FOCUS GROUP TESTING

Early on in the development of Timelapse we conducted extensive consumer focus groups. The purpose of this qualitative market research was to give us a real world check on how well the concept of Timelapse would be received by gamers and to modify our game design appropriately. Not only does this provide us with relevant consumer feedback on the game, but it also allows us an opportunity to see if our game meets (and exceeds) their expectations. Focus group testing allows us to tweak the game design early on in the process so that we can create the best game possible," remarked Mike.

SOUND

"One thing that is very important to the game is the ambient sound and music. This aspect of the game must hold the imagery together, make the worlds believable, and create that sense of 'being there' for the player," remarked Lori. 

INFO BOX

The art team has a strong background not only in fine art but animation and 3D special effects. Individually, they have done work in TV, commercials and movies and are a very tight knit group. A post production team was responsible for putting together all the live action and FMV sequences. In additional to a very strong team of 3D artists, the Timelapse team was supplemented with 2D artists with traditional character animation backgrounds.

A professional writer, Dick Moran, was initially hired to flesh out the basic skeleton for the backstory. After this basic story structure was created, the story was then fine-tuned and enhanced internally by GTE Entertainment to synch up with the game play and design of the actual product.

The screen resolution for Timelapse is 640 by 480 (full screen)

The game will be released for both the PC and Macintosh platforms. For PCs, Timelapse is designed to run on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.